Barbell Shrugged - 108- Do You Even WEIGHTLIFT Bro? OLY Technique, Training Around Injury, and CrossFit

Episode Date: March 19, 2014

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we interview Justin Thacker, weightlifting genius, and he happens to have like 30 national, international medals, something like that. World record. World record holder. Yeah, all that. Check it out. You don't want to miss this. And he beat Hulk Hogan in a street fight. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshr.com. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bloods here with Doug Larson, Chris Moore, and our guest, Justin Thacker from the weightlifting, whatever. WCW? You don't remember? I don't remember from the lab gym. I was thinking weightlifting, and then the lab gym popped in my head, and then they got scrambled.

You know what happens. It happens to you all the time. Got Justin Thacker here. We can't forget CTP behind the camera. What up? We're going to talk about weightlifting. Maybe we'll talk about some of the seminars you've been doing, been traveling around.

That's actually why you're here, because you're passing through. Before we go any further, make sure to go to barbellshrug.com, sign up for the newsletter, and we're going to send you sweet news updates about everything that's happening. Sweet news. Sweet news.

That's a sweet news sound. That's a sweet news sound. Are those buttons or is that someone's voice? That's a modem, I think. That was close to the Kenny Shuffle beat. Chris knows it.

I do, yeah. You have to do it a hundred times. A hundred times. So, Justin, you're from St. Louis and you had to drive down I do, yeah. Oh, yeah. You have to do it 100 times. 100 times. So, Justin, you're from St. Louis, and you had to drive down to Columbus, Mississippi. Is that right? Yep. Do a seminar, and on the way back, you're looking for a place to train, so we were like, we'll podcast.

Yeah, this place looked all right. I found it on Google, and it said we have weightlifting here, so I stopped in. You guys had enough squat racks to get it down, I guess. Barely. Barely enough squat racks. I saw an epic front squat pic you did. Holy shit. Intense, man.

Today? Yeah. Was it today? It looked like, do we squat today? Were you posting? Well, I saw just something. Yeah, I think she posted something. Yeah, I missed.

We won't say her name. We'll just point at her. You looked intense. Intense and buff, dude. I tried hard. It was a good filter. Was it you front squat a 405 for a double? On your way up.

I couldn't really tell. It was part kilo plates and part pound plates. I was guesstimating. Might have been four. You're throwing yourself off. 182 for a double, 192 for a single and tried 203 for a single and just barely missed. That's kilos, folks. Yeah, so pounds, I don't know.

182.5 is just over 400 pounds. Because 180 is 396. So you're basically looking at 5.5 pounds over that and a half is just over 400 pounds. And then it goes 180 is three 96. So you're basically looking at five and a half pounds over that. So you're just over 400 pounds there. Uh, or the other weights, Doug, the human calculus,

203 kilograms. Oh, two or three is four 46.6. It's impressive. Whenever there's a doubt, whenever the doubt is round up, like, yeah,

it was like 500 pounds. Basically I crushed it. Fucking nailed it. You got three quarters of the way. I actually think it helps to mix pounds, basically. I crushed it. Fucking nailed it. I got three quarters of the weight. Actually, I think it helps to mix kilo and pound plates every once in a while. Because if you don't know what's on the bar, maybe you're more likely to think less and squat more. That was going for me. Well, we were talking today.

You said your squat's going up. Your squat's the strongest. But maybe your lifts aren't quite there due to maybe some injuries. Yeah, so I had a knee injury and a shoulder injury. And those were kind of career ending to a degree. I was just really happy to get training again. And over the last two years, just learned a lot of things in terms of how to manage that and work around each injury and how to get the appropriate volume and intensity in to still be able to train like a weightlifter. But

I was just happy to do snatch, clean and jerk for so long. And I find, you know, I had to find a different group for front squatting, back squatting, all those things. And now finally I've kind of managed them all together. But what really got me back into the idea of competing, I never really retired per se, but my squat numbers have come back up and I'm actually keeping a lower body weight than before. So I was hitting good squat numbers compared to what I used to when I was going a hundred percent. And so now my strength is good to go. I just got to get more volume in the snatch, clean and jerk to be competitive again. So it's kind of all coming together, but I'm getting pretty old. So we'll see what happens.

And, you know, in the competition now, this is getting crazy. You know, American weightlifting is getting pretty good. He's taking off finally. Yeah. So these injuries two years ago? Yeah. So I had, I always forget my own timeline, but I had a knee injury. I changed a pair of shoes one day.

So my shoes, I had the old Adidas shoes and there I loved them and one of my old coaches felt bad for me so he bought me the brand new Nike shoes and the the wear pattern was so severe that uh when I changed that day I felt strong and sturdy but that first day in squats I uh I was doing a back squat triple like 220 the third rep I was like man these feel good and I was standing up and my knee buckled a little bit and I fell straight to the floor tore my menis. You felt so good that you used too much weight? Well, I was just getting cocky and aggressive the first day. And right away I was like, man, this feels great.

And so I was driving a little bit quicker than probably I would with a heavier weight. And as soon as I came up and buckled a little bit, my shin was kind of fused into place and my femur was rotating out a bit like it would normally go. So I was stuck in place, and I think that's really what torqued the knee and fell to the ground. And, you know, that was the original injury for the knee. And that took the longest time to really work around, no surgeries or anything.

So maybe the advice there might be if you change weightlifting shoes, take it easy the first couple weeks. Build slow. That's a big difference. And I'd say the biggest thing I've learned, or one of the biggest things i've learned in uh training around injury is the importance of foot stability and i never i was always such a heels only kind of guy yeah and it worked great for my pull and center of gravity but now i'm more of a foot grabber you know and i'm really getting such better stability and i've really felt differences for my whole body i always listen to those stuart mcgill lines about how if you could paw the ground it just translates to better

activation of all the posterior muscles and all the leg muscles and everything else. I also think it's a weird advertisement for those Nike shoes. Nike. You'll feel so strong, you'll fucking hurt yourself. It will get so strong so quick that you will be destroyed by it. Dude, last week you ruined our sponsorship possibility for Subway. Am I doing it for Nike?

No, I'm saying those shoes are so awesome you've got to be careful. Nike doesn't like us, Subway doesn't like us, and Jillian Michaels doesn't like us. It's all because of you. It's like a weight gain pattern. Be careful with this weight gain pattern. You'll get too huge too quick. It's actually a good thing. I remember Richard used to say to sit back on

your heels so much that you could wiggle your toes and bring your toes up off the ground and i there's some there's some something to that in some cases but i'm with you like after i think originally i heard dan john talk about this about grabbing the ground with your toes and ever since i read that article years back now i do that anytime i'm doing anything whether i'm doing munges or snatches or cleans or squatting like I'm always trying to grab the ground with my toes and I feel so much more stable when I do do that it just makes more sense

I think just like intuitively well your feet are meant to do that now why would you change that and actually do it on handstands and stuff too like grabbing the ground with your fingers on handstands like makes my shoulders feel more stable. My elbows.

I never understood tweaking form to such an extent to get pounds out of lift to where you are now no longer functional at anything else that a human would be able to do while generating force for your legs. So you tweak your squats so much, and you squat a lot, but now you can't even jump in that stance.

You can't take off in that stance and run somewhere. The good thing about learning a decent way of in positions, like from here I can lift a lot. I can also still jump from here and I can take off running. It just makes sense that you stay functional. Like power things really bad about hacking everything to death to where it only counts this one sliver thing. Now everything,

this strength is useless for other, you know, applied ways. Yeah. I mean, it was, you know, I was always a heels only guy and it just,

you know, that's the only way I, you know, was always a heels only guy and it just you know that's the only way you know i lived and died by it and taught all my lifters that and uh proof's in the pudding you know the only way i can grind out of a heavy lift or anything without pain is if i'm really gripping down hard and it has transferred to every lift and everything i do now is kind of in that that position so so far so good there for the meniscus but i'm back to the dita shoes are you yeah yeah that's right i saw you where i'd go back and forth and uh kind of settled on those i've got an orthotic in there a little bit to adjust my foot a little bit but uh those just give me a little bit more room to play with i never i never actually got the nikes i just went from the old adidas to where the heel

came off twice i had them repaired and then i i got the new adidas and i don't like how you got them repaired mike i took them them to the cobbler. You went cobbling? I didn't know. We still had cobblers. I went to the cobbler. What? I was like eight days ago.

It's a big trade, man. I guess it is a little heel. Say what? Is that like the Keebler Elf? What is it? What is a cobbler? Cobbler's got hammers. Shoe repair.

Shoe repair. I actually still have them. We can dig them out. I can show you the fix he made on them. But then it was really hot when I was in Arizona training outside and the heel just came off during training. I was like, it was 110 degrees.

I was like, all right. But he just walked into the office one day and was like, yeah, I just took these to the cobbler. Get out of here, dude. That happened. All right, so you hurt your knee. we're good at getting off track here yeah well so then from there uh things started moving forward and uh my lifts were coming back together

i had to change my technique a lot and squats and the lifts and had to bring my stance a little bit closer uh in both lifts and then um things were going well and then i was starting to ratchet up my snatches again finally on a double one day, you know, everything since day one, I'm deaf in my left ear, so everything on the left side of my body is a little bit off, and since day one, I've kind of shifted like this. It's been something that's really plagued me, and then finally, just one bad rep on the squat got me, but, you know, I didn't watch my lifts all the time, didn't realize I was rotating all the time.

But on a snatch one day, like I said, they were starting to go well again, and I just barely missed a double behind, and I threw a little thump in my shoulder and I had it set assessed and basically a labrum injury there. And so that really knocked me out for another year or so. And then just, I was just happy to train from that point forward. And so I tried a lot of different things and eventually found a way to manage that and keep the high intensity lifting going. And now it's kind of like, well, shit,

I'm hitting some strength numbers that were better than I ever did when I was really active. So we'll see what happens. Is doing the pulls where you pull, catch it on your shoulders, and then drop it immediately without standing up yet, or catching it like in a power position and then dropping it again without standing all the way up like I see a lot of high-level lifters do but crossfitters typically don't do. Is that to to save uh some wear and tear on yourself absolutely so i do so i mean it's they're bad habits for a lot of people i would say for sure uh but for me it was something

i kind of did in the snatch early on but i i was someone who did so much volume on a day-to-day basis that i was just saving it for you know it wasn't a limit for me it was never standing with this with a snatch was a limit for me so you know you know you've got it right so if i felt locked in you know i was like okay it's done but but really more than anything it's just for the wear and tear and there's only so many reps in in positions uh that you hit that are suboptimal that you know one bad rep is all it takes to ruin your day ruin your career especially the tippy top once you're at that fine top level of getting everything out of your body one tiny little move and then you and you've run out of buffer to protect yourself I've done thousands and thousands of

reps maybe millions but two of them was all it took so I've got to make sure if they're not there razor's edge so is that something you'd recommend only for experts for the most part like once you're doing a super high volume of heavy Olympic stuff then you can cut your lifts off halfway

through because you know you're going to be able to stand up with it and that's not going to fuck you up i think you know during competition it should be a coach's and lifters decision based on that for sure you know if it turns into a bad habit that's going to end up making you miss lifts and meets then that's a whole other thing like uh for me though you know the bad habit i've gotten into is it really hurts for me to adjust for my jerk grip now still still my shoulder. So if I don't keep my maintenance work for that to make it feel good, leads to missing jerks in the competition if you stop taking your jerks a lot. So, you know, I hadn't competed for two years. I just did the Arnold and it was kind of a rusty day for me. But, you know, normally my jerks way ahead of my clean, but I just, you know, stopped. When the pain started with that lift, I'd stop hitting my

jerks in training. Not a great idea. So ultimately, I'd say it can bite you in the ass. You know, so, but definitely, I think it's not something you want to start early on and develop those habits. The only people I've ever seen,

to Doug's point, I've seen guys who probably started lifting when they were like 10 and now they're late 20s and now they do that kind of thing. It's like 10, 20 years of training experience

and now they can get away with cutting reps. I guess no one really should do it. I'll say a lot of guys like pull a double and on the first rep, they'll cut it off halfway through. They're like, okay, I got that one. They just drop it before they stand up. And then on the second rep, they'll catch it and stand all the way up. Just kind of cutting their wear and tear

in half, but still getting two good pulls as one example. 13.50 Scott Peer 00,00,00 And in that scenario for me, for sure, my focus is on getting two good pulls in. You know, it's not about standing up the weight. So the i get that uh second rep in it neurologically i feel that that connection a little bit better so depending on the exercise that that's how i look at that but uh you know standing up readjusting your straps all those things it's kind of delaying that amount of time and uh you just don't get the same feel and same groove for what you're trying to do so at this point in your career is your technique basically consistent enough where your your pulls and your your Olympic skill work is skill work and it's not really strength work at all?

And basically you're trying to get stronger on squats. And if your squat goes up, your Olympic stuff goes up, too. Or or is it not like that? Well, I would have said that two years ago for sure. It was a matter of me just getting stronger because the only thing that really would put a pulse of improvement. You know, I tried so many things for so long that really I looked at all the competitors around my weight class and what they were squatting. I realized, man, I've never really focused on that. And everybody in my class was squatting around 250 or more.

I'm like, shit, I need to do that. And when I focused on that exclusively, that's when my total shot up to over 320 in training. You know, and that's what I was hitting pretty consistently at that point in time in training. But nothing else had been such a strong impetus to get my numbers there until I got my squat strength up. But that was then. And I'd worked out all the kinks in my technique. And I had the same technique finally that would not be something I experimented with anymore. Post-injury, though, everything's different.

I'm a different lifter. So I'm definitely working a lot of kinks out for sure. And there's a lot of kinks out uh for sure and it's there's a lot of things that are fresh but ultimately in the lift like the clean yeah if i get my legs stronger it's definitely going up uh and the jerk typically but now that you know i now have to clean with a narrow grip and adjust to a wide grip that used to not be the case so you know there's some little things there to work out and the snatch it's uh still not something that you know a lot of full uh percentage lifts can i catch in the bottom all

the time and be pain-free all the time so that's something that may or may not ever get worked out 100 you know you mentioned that you were now oh sorry you mentioned how you're crushing the squat i gotta i gotta ask what you're doing now i mean shit that's a that's a titillating topic to get into like what's what has made a difference with your return lately what is helping the weight get up there for the the weights to go up well a few a few things, but let's say, so first of all, my numbers now, well, all time squat numbers when I was kind of between 85 and 94 in terms of weight class was a 200 front squat and a 250 back squat at lifting as a weightlifter. So considering all the volume in the snatch, clean and jerk, you know, know starts to add up so uh but now uh i'm training closer 87 kilos and i'm much lighter in my weight

cut is not that big but uh so i'm hitting uh been hitting 200 pretty regularly in the front squat and 240 pretty routinely in the back squat and 250 is just right around the corner so i'm feeling more safe and more secure in my positions and ultimately grinding on a heavy squat scares me with my knee all the time so if that is not feeling right if i hit too many heavy cleans and it feels kind of beat up then that determines where i'm going with my training so that being said you know there was a phase there where we were moving gyms and i couldn't get as many high percentage snatches and clean jerks in so it was more of a focus on keep your squats in keep your pulls and things of that nature and and my squat you know my legs were fresh i wasn't as beat up and you know my

squat started to climb again so then once I reintroduced more lifts again, holy crap, I'm cleaning 170 pretty routinely without, you know, having to get too crazy about it. And so that was a pretty good training clean for me, uh, as compared to, uh, say the past when my legs were strong and I was hitting crazy amounts of volume in the lifts and the squats, you know? So you're going for a high doing the lifts close to, to limit frequently or keeping the volume a little lower, not beating yourself up so much volume, but keeping the weight higher more frequently? Is that what's being said? Well, that's kind of what brought him back to life. But now it's just a balance of, you know, it's time to push my squats again.

I got to back off on high percentage cleans more than anything. But keeping them still in check to where when we get closer to competition, we'll start hitting a lot more of those in squats or in maintenance. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, but we should have mentioned this at the beginning of the podcast, which is we didn't actually talk about who you are, but I think that's because we all have hung out with you several times, and you've been on two episodes.

So if you want to know more about where Justin comes from, episodes 34 and 60 are really great to check out. Uh, but I do want to mention before we go any further that you also run the lab gym where you have a bunch, a bunch, a lot, millions. Yeah. You've got a lot. Yeah. Of, uh, of weightlifters and then now CrossFitters as well. I think the last time we talked, you know, you were just getting the CrossFit side of things taken off. Uh, so, so uh not only are you a weightlifter yourself but you're coaching weightlifters and you organize the weightlifters in a fantastic way in the gym uh and monitor everybody really well which is very impressive

uh but uh your crossfit what was it we talked to you as episode 60 so that must have been like 50 episodes ago almost a year ago huh it's been almost a year. How's that going with the CrossFit gym? It's crazy to see something grow so fast. We got into it pretty late and had a slow onset to get there, but it's been blazing saddles ever since. I mean, we've been approaching about a hundred members recently and seeing that grow. And we went from a big gym already to a much bigger gym and expanded December of this last year. And it's just, I already feel like we're out of space. So it's just a matter of managing that growth and keeping the quality where we want it. So yeah, so we have

a pretty tight system on teaching the lifts and from coach to coach, keeping that system tight. So we're all speaking the same language and having a uniform structure to teach beginner to intermediate and advanced person all sort of at the same time and bringing something comprehensive together so they can do the snatch, do the clean and jerk and then see progress from week to week. You know, warm up to do the workout, but then actually get better at the lift and be able to do that in the water or eventually get to it pretty soon or realize what their weakness or limitation might be. Hey, I need to squat more. Hey, my position in my front rack sucks and I can't even get into the bottom for a snatch or a clean. So you were telling me earlier

before we podcasted about how you kind of structure the week. So you got lifts on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Yeah, so we have it structured Monday through Saturday, actually. That is, I would say, almost 40 to 50% of the programming is pretty static,

but there's a routine cycle to it. But they know what to expect in terms of certain lifts on each day of the week. But the lifts themselves come out on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And they know that, hey, that's Olympic Lifting Day where we're going to do some technique and skill work there. But it's more of a warm-up and sort of an abbreviated version of our ABC teaching method. So it's basically about seven minutes of that. Then we get more closer to the workout. So anyway, the clean would come on Monday.

The snatch would be on Wednesday, and the jerk starts first on Friday, and we do some rack jerk work, and then we put the full clean and jerk together on Friday. So that way, you see people who are brand new to CrossFit, brand new to the lifts, middle-aged people and all over the place in terms of the population, and I'm impressed. I mean, a lot of them would finally become not only to get to be competitive in CrossFit, but also when they compete in weightlifting. And they just started, you know, less than a year ago. Yeah, if you look at if you look at like the movement selection for the open regionals and the games, Olympic weightlifting is a huge component more than, you know, any other single component you can think of.

So if somebody wants to be good at any of that, they, you know, you need to be in a facility or being coached or you need to be practicing on your own. The Olympic lifts, I like how you've got that much lifting going on with the athletes all the time. I mean, I think your athletes are going to get, have a huge advantage. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely our niche and it, you know, we got a complaint recently from a lady from Florida. She came in and she's like, you know, I did CrossFit all the time at this gym in Florida

and we never did the Olympic lifts. And she was complaining because we did so many of them. I'm like, that's a pretty crucial piece of CrossFit. I get the dilemmas on why you would never do them, and it's a coaching limitation. And practicality of is it good for this person or not, and can we infuse that into our classes. But I just, you know, you've got to know how to regress it

and coach it and put it together. There's always a way that anybody can do them, some variation of them, right? Absolutely. You don't have to fall back on doing some substitute for it i mean it's they're the they're the pinnacle of a lot of movement qualities for a reason it's it's the best way to move explosively you know and just a matter of knowing how to put that progression together and that's why it's built the way it is is so you can see and make those decisions for that person on the spot you're not doing the full lift today uh you need to work on that that position here's a medicine ball or here's a pvc pipe and that's decisions for that person on the spot, you're not doing the full lift today. You need to work on that position.

Here's a medicine ball or here's a PVC pipe, and that's it for today. And at the end of the class, we might talk about their limitation and why they regressed and can build from there. And you have a system for that, for kind of identifying, you know, whether someone's ready to move forward or not. And that's kind of used the ABCs for that? Yeah, so it's built off the ABCs that we'd use for our weightlifters and really getting someone into our full-blown weightlifting group. ABCs, a.k. so it's built off the ABCs that we'd use for our weightlifters and really getting someone

into our full-blown weightlifting group. ABCs, a.k.a. the Thacker Method. That's right. We stopped calling them the ABCs already. I'm stuck on the ABCs. The Thacker Method sounds so much more intense, man. I can't talk about myself in the third person. But yeah, so the warm-up starts.

We do whatever bodyweight warm-up you do, but then everyone has the barbell ready to go, and we actually start with a PVC pipe. We go through our position stretches, which we would call the squatting quad stretch, the overhead lockout or overhead squat. Let's say if we're working with the snatch and it's a warmup for everyone that they all need to do, but we're already assessing you're screwed, you got it. And I would, I would say, Hey, that's what it should look like, you know, and something that is slowly building from class to class or week to week.

And then from there, the warmup starts elaborating and we start, we use technique plates and we start putting the ABC progression together. So pauses from the floor and it's always a buildup. So people who've done it and who have the capacity to do it are getting better and better each week. And they're understanding the lift more completely from week to week. And we build on that and we have a breakout practice period that would come in after say that seven minute progression. So they did a general warmup and save some stretches there. Then we go to a ramp up like any good lifter would do or any lifter would do.

And from there, we'd have a session of about eight minutes or more to actually work on the lifts and you could do breakouts with the coaches basically. And so it comes together. Yeah, it was a little,

I guess about a year and a half ago, I finally got convinced to come up to your gym in St. Louis and I was introduced to the ABCs and I did like the full-blown 45 minutes right of abc you were toasted from the very beginning i was a through z a through z yeah i was breathing hard uh yeah it's work yeah it was uh it was really awesome i mean they actually improved my lifts even though i've been lifting for a long time and then i turned around and

brought it home and we started teaching like noobs like completely new crossfitters new to weightlifting new to crossfit we started introducing some of the ideas and lo and behold they were learning a lot faster than what we had been doing before you know a lot of the other traditional uh introductory methods of of weightlifting and I we've been kind of we've held on to the Thacker Method or ABCs or whatever you want to call it since then. Yeah. So you did a four-part video series on Techniquad where you showed that whole thing.

Now that we have a new website, we could probably just post all four of those videos on one of our pages. We'll do barbellstruck.com slash Thacker Method. I'll post all four of those videos so you can find them easily. Slash ABC. You don't have to search.

So you don't have to search through YouTube. T-H-A-C-K-E-R method. You know, another thing about the full-blown ABC method and the version you went through, and just in general, it really gives people a better sense of what the lift should be and feel like versus, hey, I'm a meathead.

I'm going to put some weight on the bar and throw it over my head and catch it that never works does it hope for the best you know and really oh there's positions and there's timing and there's all these other things to consider and you're practicing that with the bar and once you know 45 minutes in you're like fuck i don't want any weight on this bar you know the barbell is good enough and it feels great and it's a nice fluid movement and next time as you go we start adding some more weight on there it's like that feels great and the weight comes you know versus being frustrated like i go you know if i can snatch i'm not hearing myself i hear you my own so if i can say you know i might have a chance to help

snatch 100 kilos but i come in i don't touch the bar i put 60 kilos on there 80 kilos on there 100 kilos you're gonna suck forever do you think that that technique helps where traditionally it's up to tell people leave the weight off the bar just just do your broomstick, do whatever, and do lifts. And just about everybody goes, man, fuck this. I'm going to put some weight on there. But if you make it to where the bar or the broomstick, I guess, I guess I'd be beat up by the broomstick doing this whole method initially. If you make it to where that beats your ass, then people go, right, I don't want to put

weight on the bar. It's that inverse. It's where they actually do what they're supposed to be doing to learn. And they respect that process. Yeah, you respect it. Absolutely. Awesome. Let's respect that process. Yeah. You respect it. Absolutely. Awesome. Wow.

Let's take a break real quick. When we come back, we'll reveal all the secrets that Thacker has. All of them. Every single one of them. And we're back with Justin Thacker, weightlifting extraordinaire, lab gym coach,

owner, weightlifting athlete. Heavy metal CrossFit? Heavy metal CrossFit. Check it out. Check out the sweet shirt. Big time fan of the show Glee. Yes.

He did that better than Mike did in the video the other day. He went to show a logo and he was like, check it out. And he totally distorted the logo. Yeah, I crushed the logo. See how he did it? He pulled it down. Pulled it all straight. Well, he's smarter than me. He figured it out like, damn.

He was promoting his own thing and I was promoting somebody else's. So, might have been a little more care went into it. I don't know. Maybe. Just a little bit. I know you. That's likely true. So, you basically told us one of your secrets during the break. And I'm not sure we should bring it up or not. Should we talk about steroids or not?

He told us the number one steroid for all CrossFitters. It'll make you better at everything. Sign up for the newsletter. We'll send you that information right now. Unmarked boxes to your address. Well, I think, so I mentioned one of the biggest things I learned was being conscious of foot stability. But I think probably the biggest thing I learned throughout these years,

or at least since the injury, is just the importance of flexibility and stretching and getting yourself loosened up for training. And I can't reiterate that enough. So the big aha at one point was I need to squat more. Now I'd say at this point, it's I need to get flexible and get in position and spend time on that and having etched out amount of time morning, night, pre training, during training, post training, having a system to work on those issues every day. And you know, spend time on that and have an etched out amount of time morning, night, pre-training, during training, post-training, having a system to work on those issues every day. And yeah, I may have fixed one problem, but it's got to be maintenance for the rest of your life. And what I've noticed is faster recovery in days where I used to walk in like, I'm screwed. There's no

way I can even get down and do a lift today. Whereas I've been found that I can consistently come and train every single day and work those kinks out if I stretch myself through the process. So the injuries, the trigger points I'd have, the injuries I'd have, the things that would hold me back, they are less and less, and I'm covering 80% of my normal problems and trigger points I'd usually have as a result of certain things I do. I go through a various lower body circuit every day, upper body and shoulder circuit I do every single day,

and if I don't, all this shit comes back. What do you mean by trigger points? Well, just any knots or, you know, any things that are so much tension in one spot that starts to ball up. And that could be the root of the problem that I might be experiencing. It might be a trigger point or a knot,

basically, say, right below my shoulder blade. And it's causing tension through my whole side of my body here. And it's pulling me down into a bad position or even forward into a bad position. And once I knock that out, hey, I can move a little bit better and not have certain pains and and ultimately you know for years even before the injury I'd get all these knots on the left side of my body and and uh open to my neck even and uh finally realized how that

was associated to my shoulder and the bad positioning I was getting and I'd always I'd catch snatches a lot like this and I was just all tensed up over here and I finally got that all loose and uh i found okay i've got more range there it doesn't hurt anymore one side of your body's drawn too tight yeah so you need manual therapy for that i had a lot of people working me you know a lot of uh you know everything art dry needling uh lots of deep tissue massage chiropractors physical therapists everything i've tried a lot of different things and and ultimately being diligent on some basic stuff did the most for me ultimately not that those things didn't help me

but I was kind of chasing pinpoint symptoms a lot of times but this is more of a I'm you know a generic broad stroke that worked out so many issues so just a good maintenance plan of hey my lower body flexibility sucks and I need to work on my bottom position every single day and I do a squat and hold sequence every single morning. It starts with body weight. Then I start putting the barbell in position. And every single day, I'm more elastic in the bottom. My recovery is better.

Get down there and sit. Yeah. And so I might start with, say, a minute squat and hold and then do a generic stretch for each lower body muscle, giving you a good 30 to 60 seconds in each spot, then working myself back to, say, a squat and hold. Oh, it feels great. I can bounce now. I've got some elasticity in there. Then I might throw a barb overhead for snatch,

front rack, back squat, everything. And so it's, my positions are better. I'm getting more range. I have less pain. It takes a lot of time and effort.

And yeah, it's easy to skip that and save yourself 10 minutes, but it's not worth it. Yeah. At the end of the day. So you do a lot of position specific stretching. Yeah. Do you have any other examples

besides just sitting in the bottom of a squat? Not yoga. You're doing weightlifting. Right, right. It's a specific purpose. But I go through phases where I'm working on a specific position, but there's times where I'm going to attack

every single individual muscle and I'm taking inventory. What's tight? Give it some specific attention. But I'm like, screw this. All I need is a two-minute squat and hold with a barbell on my back. And sometimes that's a maintenance plan plan but then i have to usually come

back to hitting a little bit everything and that stuff floats around so something's differently tight every day based on the imbalances i have so uh so i go back and forth on that but uh that would be say my general lower body approach and i might need to spend more time on my calves you know now that i pull the the floor of my foot getting all kinds of new calf sensations you know inside outside front and back. So I got to work on that. But then for the upper body, just a lot of different shoulder mobility work, you know, and you know, I do a lot of say the bands and stretching the front side, the backside,

and that was really very productive for my shoulder injury and hitting it from not just, okay, that hurt, it hurts in the snatch grip, so I'm just gonna hit that one side. I'm hitting every direction I can, and it's got more range and freedom everywhere so you're sticking around to find out where it's tight yeah right yeah and so and not just that i'm hitting that specific pain point but i'm actually keeping a healthy range for the entire shoulder you know and keeping that up to date you know sort of a maintenance plan what do you do in the way of a non-weightlifting exercises you you throw a lot of like traditional like strict pull-ups into your programming since you're just a weightlifter at the moment? I've always done quite a bit, actually.

I started in powerlifting very young, and I really love that. And then I kind of got into strongman training a bit. And just enough bodybuilding to look like I actually work out. I've been in training my whole life. So weightlifting never really did it for me. So I always did some bodybuilding-type work to at least look like I picked up a weight. Kept the Chinese, man. Yeah.

Kept the Chinese, bro. So, but I do a lot of just general strength training for sure. A lot of push-pull type of work throughout the week. And when I can and I'm not beat up from all the volume, I'll do usually two upper and two lower body push-pull type days. And so I'm always, you know, I do a lot of horizontal vertical type push and pull work. So that's definitely always there. And that's definitely helped.

But on the flip side, if you're chasing numbers all the time you start grinding things out that starts hurting too and causing problems you know i can't do a lot of good strict overhead presses anymore since that injury you know it's going to the position the snatch and jerk i can get there but everything down here is still a problem it hurts and really pushing from that low position is a problem yeah so that's a push presses. Give it a little momentum. That bothers my knee. So you know, so bringing the bar down. It's always something. Yeah, so bringing it down. It's starting to sound like me.

Right, bringing the bar down to even receive it, you know, I've got that ability to receive weight in that left knee is not really there. So I have to drop all my jerks and if something's not there, I'm not going for it. And so even a snatch grip behind the neck, push press with lightweight bothers it. So a lot of that's not there.

So I gotta, you know, I do axle presses for my shoulder now so i can get a better position doesn't hurt as much and i can still do vertical pressing but it's i'm losing i'm missing 40 kills at least off of my normal workload fatter bars will will feel better on your on your shoulders a lot absolutely elbows and hands too because you have to squeeze the bar so much yeah tennis elbow or something that's a good trick how long have you been weightlifting how old were you when you started i was 10 when i started playing with powerlifting and squatting. My first workout was a 20 rep squat workout. Awesome.

I was 10 years old. Do you regret any of the early powerlifting in terms of its impact or delay on your ability to get there? I don't regret any of it, but it gave me a good strength base, but I had to work out a lot of problems. I was very tight and stiff, and I still am, and things have never been able to completely work out so i don't know if it was the fault of powerlifting or just i suck i've started working on my problems this year right yeah the age of 33 i'm thinking i'm gonna make my run now yeah it's never too late no shit but i have like you know i piloted for like 12 years hard and before that did all the bullshit you know you know the gym typical fitness stuff that was terrible and yeah

man to get back all that lost uh yeah most mobility is really ingrained you know and the transition was rough for me i was so tight my squat and squatted wide and everything and uh changing it up was was radical but then i was changed for the most part than the injury kind of changed you know i had to start over so So, so how long have you been started weightlifting? Oh, weightlifting. I was 17, 17.

Yeah. And then how old are you now? 33, 33. Oh, we're same age. So sometimes like I hear people go, Oh,

why you hurt all the time or something like that. I'm like, there's only so many more, so many miles you can put on the car. You know, and it's, it's probably a lot of it's not what you're doing wrong. I mean,

there might be like little tweaks. You can make things better, but you know, it's it's probably a lot of it's not what you're doing wrong i mean there might be like little tweaks you can make things better but you know after 15 was it almost what almost 20 years or more than 20 years of hard training you know and that's the thing like i was if people saw the ridiculous volume and stuff i've done through the years i mean my body's been extremely resilient in spite of my less than perfect positions in say technique at certain times and the stupid decisions i made with training and the just pound, pound, pound, a hundred percent every day, I didn't have any injuries. And I was, what was that? I guess it's been two years, I guess. So until I was 31, most guys are retired already. So if you look at all those reps, all the stupid stuff I did, all the, and I was hitting Bulgarian

stuff and I would clean 170 on Monday, 160 Tuesday, 170 Wednesday, 160 Thursday, 170 again Friday, and 160 plus on Saturday. And it's like, I feel great. We'll go again next week. And never felt like I was at risk or, you know, and I was, I had built a good sensor to not take stupid attempts, but there was a lot of tonnage there. Yeah. There's a lot of heavy tonnage there. And I learned to control that. But if you look at all that work, I'm like, I think it was pretty safe, and I had it under great control. And something as silly as changing your shoes causes injury. Right. And I already had, like I said, I was deaf in my left ear, and I had some issues there.

So it set off a cascade for sure. And a lot of things that far in after that many years of pushing and pushing and still trying to hit it, be best i can to make prs there's a limit yeah i mean i remember in my mid-20s when i was uh first weightlifting i would look at guys that were in their mid-30s they're not doing it anymore the guys have been doing it their whole life i'm like oh why don't they do it anymore and they're like oh you'll understand when you get right all right now i'm like ah it catches up with you because the guys that are competing in the master's division they weren't competing in their 20s. Right. They weren't the same guys that were competing as a junior or anything like that.

These are guys that discovered it later in life. Now they're there. So I find that really interesting. Even when I was in my mid-20s, I was like, yeah, I'll still be hitting it hard then. And I was just trying to like. You just mentioned being a junior. You were a junior national champion or got a silver or something like that champion yeah champion national champion and so you actually started competing early on not just learning right so i was 17 when i started i think i took bronze that year uh the first year with the second

year i won it was still actually pretty late uh onset into the sport and you know i'd never made a junior world team i think if i had a few more years, you know, getting into that, to learning the technique and positions, my strength was there from the start. But so still, in my opinion, kind of late, but I still had most of my adult years to really tack it at all my twenties and all that. But unfortunately, you know, when I think I was really making a lot of progress and able to apply a lot of things, I finally learned, and that's when the injuries came in. You know, we, you know, and I tried to get in the business, you know, I made the stupid decision of, of okay I'm going to try to run a business and do all these things at the same time I'm unstoppable that caught up you know I was able

to do a lot of things I can still train like an idiot all day now that I do that and it's a nice structured lifestyle but uh you know it what it is what it is you know it's ages coming and injuries are there and and I think ultimately you know i was a late developer and i still could have rid that a little bit longer but we'll see probably introducing a lot of stress from you know running a business yeah i mean i mean if you had been a professional athlete getting paid enough to not have to work or whatever yeah you probably could have hung in there more you wouldn't have the stress of of work and all that kind of stuff and you you work a lot of hours from what I understand.

A few. Yeah, you wake up earlier than me and you work later than me. I know that. Monster. It means you work about 9.45 and then you go to bed. Right.

Pretty low standard. It is a low standard, but... Snow, but yeah. Yeah, you know, it was going to be a hard road either way if I went full lifting or business or whatever, but I kind of realized early on, hey, if you don't make the Olympics, what else do you have? So I went with the business route and realized I love training more than anything, more than competing or winning anything.

I want to train like a fool for the rest of my life, and that's what makes me happy ultimately. So that was kind of the direction I went early on. I just didn't know all the sacrifices. God bless the sacrifices that would explain that three-hour training sessions right yeah yeah that's a capacity it's built up over years but it's normal it's normal for you yeah it's every day for the most part you know until something hurts you train three hours every day three to four on average and in some days you know and it's not like I gotta train three hours or I'm a pussy you know it's like there's there's like, you know, there's days, of course, that are one to two hours. And it's just a matter of have I messed up my programming?

Am I under recovering? What do I got to do? So it's definitely adjusted. Things are going well and I'm smart about programming and recovery. Yeah, I can bang it out. Yeah, we did. We did what was a short workout for you today. And afterwards, I was like, yeah, I think I'm going to go home and eat and sleep.

I didn't get my poles in so what's next for you let's see uh competitively uh well if i can yeah i'm gonna retire you know retire i mean i don't think i need an official day for that but uh i'm gonna train as hard as I can until that is passed. So if I can make a trials, if we actually have a trials, then I'd like to go to it, and then that's it. I want to put everything into it now that my strength's back up to where it was. I want to see what I can do. But whether that means I compete or not, we'll see. But I'd like to hit PRs in competition would be the number one goal.

But the guys, I would say, that are in the 85s now are doing such an amazing job. I've never seen such a deep pack ever. Everyone's snatching 150. Top five, six, seven guys are snatching 150. It's crazy. The culture is finally changing. The expectations are, no, we shouldn't be any different than anybody else. Fuck this.

These guys are killing it. That's what's making the difference. Who's at the top right now in the 85s? In the 85s now, it would be Travis Cooper. He's got his kids really putting it together. He's kind of at that point in his career where he's always been always been very strong and he's polishing up all this stuff and he's very consistent and hitting huge totals and he's making progress still and he's gonna be killing it for a while so uh him and then all the guys under him are pretty hungry and kicking ass

and then their snatches as young as they are uh are outstanding and then uh their clean jerks are not to where I would say oh you know across that whole pack is what i would expect with that kind of a snatch but you know they're all around 180s or so and some of them are breaking 190s and whatnot but that's hard to compete with so uh if things had kept going for me i think i would definitely got to that point but you know are you gonna turn to the next are you gonna be the louis simmons away lifting where you just fucking refuse to quit you will break yourself 800 times you'll be 70 years old going for a snatch in competition. We'll see.

I don't know. I mean, I can't see myself competing as a master as much. I'll definitely get more involved coaching for sure. You know, it's always hard to do both and be as much as you want to be in both elements. Because I'll tell you what I want to do. I realized as an ex-pilot there, I could never beat anybody in my prime.

I was never really super committed to everything you had to do to be in prime. But I always said to myself, I could be the old guy who beats all the guys' asses who used to beat my ass. I do that in weightlifting, too. Especially if I factor in all the ex-piloters who would give weightlifting a try. I know I can beat those dudes. They're way more beat up than me. That's how I rule them. I like that.

It's a long game. I take a long game, yeah. The last guy to snatch the last PR before dropping dead, he's the one that actually wins. He wins the competition. But, you know, my retirement plan will be powerlifting and strongman. I'll go back to those roots. But, you know, strongman's a fun sport.

You might power better than you really thought you could. All this work. That's why I felt like my lifting is strength and my strength in lifts like the deadlift and the squat has gotten a lot better

since I went to more of like maybe a weightlifting influence thing. Getting down there, pulling with better mechanics, working better positions. It's amazing how if you get in a better position,

you're stronger. It turns out you don't have to listen to like Hatebreed play to 11 and you know, snort a bunch of F.E.F.E.D.R. before you go into the gym to make yourself strong. No, it turns out you don't have to listen to like Hatebreed play to 11 and score a bunch of FFedra before you go into the gym

to make yourself strong. No, it turns out mechanics and posture and all that really do make a difference. I discovered it after 23 years of training. It's crazy. It works. Kind of like Lauren used to say,

you say that weightlifting's good for you unless you compete in it. Right. And it's not as good for you anymore. The same thing with CrossFit. I'd say it's really good for you, but if you start competing in it, you start degloving yourself.

Pretty much every sport there is. Yeah, exactly. You know, people always ask me, is this safe and should my kids do this or not? And I'm like, there's that fine line

where this isn't about health anymore. Well, it really all depends really on, no, it's not. You can just suck forever and be very healthy and do well, but until you cross that line, it's different. There's not. He can just suck forever and be very healthy and do well,

but until you cross that line, it's a different world. There's a point where it's just not natural to hold 300 pounds in a snatch grip overhead while you're squatting. Well, naturally do it,

but you do it for three hours a day every day for 23 years and before long, I'm getting kind of tired of this. Your body rejects you. If anything, if you compare yourself

to a runner that would do similar volume, you held up way better. Yeah. No, yeah, that's some issues now but i honestly i feel pretty proud of how resilient i've been for so many years and all the stupid stuff i've done and the volume you know i think if you're playing baseball football soccer any other sport you'd be you'd be in a fucking chair yeah pushing it that hard fucking football by the time you were 30 years old you're dude you're you're Methuselah

you're ancient you're no you're being put out of the pasture you're tough turkey you're not worth anything alright so shocked we haven't

talked about it yet but we we filmed a seminar with you about three years ago at least we were like Justin

your shit is so amazing and you said you'd been working on some stuff already we should film it so everyone can like you know see it online so you can see how great we think you are and then we did and then we pretended it was like the faction fundamentals blueprint and we never put it out and so it's been a year since we it's maybe a year about about a year about a year but it's coming out soon you're not you're not dragging ass you're building suspense right there's a point where you just like you build build build and then like nobody fucking cares anymore we were waiting to switch the website which we just did so now we can now when we put that product out so we spent two whole days basically recording

everything you know which was super easy by the way all we do is be like hey uh will you talk about weightlifter nutrition you'd be like uh sure go and you'd talk for 60 minutes in front of the camera in a well thought out organized manner and without leaving anything out it was insane it was fantastic it's like yeah i got to sit there and watch like an encyclopedia just go off the whole time for weightlifting. But yeah, I would say you're what you did with the information you present. I think it ended up being like 15, 17 hours worth of footage. Yeah. CTP is well aware since he filmed it. But what time we started, what time we ended?

Oh, it was like it was like early in the started in early afternoon and didn't leave until Saturday. I think I was the only one awake still recording at the end of the day. You guys were all passed out on the floor. He was just going. We were drinking beer and passed out. And he's over there working. You know, working. I was working hard, you know.

But now we ended up being, how long did it end up being total, Doug? I know that we broke it up into 20 minute segments. I haven't added it up yet, but it's a bunch of 20 minute videos. We made it very digestible, small little chunks, but it's still going to be probably 10 or 12 hours after it's all edited and put together. So I see it as more of a resource. So super comprehensive. Yeah, more of a resource.

And kind of like as soon as like it was all done, I was like, that was like the college course of weightlifting. Like if you were to take a college course for weightlifting, that was it. It was comprehensive. There'd be like two semesters worth. Yeah, it wasn't just like, here's how to snatch, clean and jerk. And here's like the basics of the technique that's out there a bunch. We also covered that in the product, but it was more for specifically for athletes and coaches that wanted to learn more about the sport of weightlifting and wanted to know like all the

little details that go into the sport for you talked about you talk about programming you talk about the history of the sport you talked about like all the different training methods like how the russians do it different from the people from poland different than uh the bulgarians and different from the americans like you went through all the different programs that are around the world and talked about what's the same and what's different and that was like probably one of the most comprehensive parts of the whole thing you went over all the biomechanics of each one of the movements talking about bar paths and all the studies that have been done and like all the you went in all the details like all the force diagrams and like bar paths and and center of pressure on people's feet and which ones have successful lists and which ones don't.

Like it was, it was like super, super in depth. Yeah. And it had the ABCs. Right. And the ABCs. That's right.

And the Thacker Method. Yeah. And the Thacker Method. But you know, I really, when I have Ryan. He's done it. He's now talking about himself in third person.

Right. We built the ego. So whenever I, you know, I think of stuff like this, it's, I'm always hearing everyone's complaints and voices and different perspectives in my head.

Anytime I talk about it, it's like, I got to satisfy all these guys. And so I really am trying to hear it out from each point of view and explain it to the coaches level and the coaches that feel this way or that way, all the way down to the person who's brand new at it. So that's why it gets so elaborate and there's so many pieces to it. And it's really, there's something for everybody in there. Some people might love or hate certain points of it. I'm sure I'll get some hate from it. But at the end of the day, everyone else is going to be blown away with the amount of information and what they need to gather from it. So it should save a lot of time.

It's very well organized as well. That's a big thing. It's not just a lot of information. It's organized in a very linear fashion. Point by just for the comparison of programs alone. I don't think anybody's taking a really structured look at how everything compares and contrasts to each other yeah those questions have burned me forever like is it my programming is it this is that and it haunts a lot of people you want if you want anything else you want to be confident what you're prescribing what you

understand because a lot of people i mean we even get there sometimes you feel like i don't know if i'm fucking hitting this the way i need to and it fucking wears on you it's nice to be confident know you have a really good resource to refer to yeah i like how you how you were showing what was the same and different in the programs because some people have if you look at it from one perspective they have drastically different programming if you're only looking at the differences like you brought up how the russians do it compared to the bulgarians or the chinese or something and you're like these guys do heavy singles every day these guys say never do heavy singles every day these guys say do like like more reps and sets more volume and these guys say no like singles only and these guys say snatch clean jerk squat that is it these guys say lots of variety lots of different pulls lots of bodybuilding

exercises on top of it knee extensions like yeah knee extensions like crazy shit like they're so they're very polar opposites but they all have world champions like how can that be and so you broke it down and went deeper into those programs and showed well really they're not that different because these things are the same and these things are the important things and then all these little stupid details people argue about maybe aren't that important do if you want to do them yeah you know and really and then once we get into the programming building on top of that it's like okay now i'm confused as hell now what so it's, why would these things be in certain programs or not? And really so the individual or the coach can really look at it and say,

that's why they do those things. And now if I have a certain need or limitation, that's why I integrate it into my program. And that's why I might need it or not need it. And to sort of optimize their training structure and what they may need to go more Polish, more Bulgarian-ish, more Russian-ish, whatever they need to do and realize why that might be an important thing to do.

I need to tell you what I need. You need to tell me what to do. You need to tell me. Steroids. Longer beard. You actually talk about steroids for like an hour about how they're used around the world. You could go Polish.

Polish plus steroids. You look kind of Polish. Do that. Do it based on your genealogy. There you go. All right, we're going to wrap this up. Do we have a place for people to find out more about this program, Doug? Yeah, it's not hosted at this exact moment, but it should be any day now.

So it's going to be at weightlifting.barbellshrug.com. And then we should have a more thorough explanation of everything that's in the program if you go to that page. Yeah, we'll get into more details. More details. More, more, more details. Absolutely. 48- So many details. You got anything else you want to plug before we end it here? 49- We got a weightlifting competition May 10th, so this is out by then,

and you can make it to the Lab Gym in St. Louis. Come and see our new huge, amazing gym on May 10th. So huge. So huge. 48- Lab Gym in St. Louis. Yes. So labgym.. Lab Gym in St. Louis. Yes. So labgym.com, Heavy Metal CrossFit as well. And we're also doing the ABC seminars

and USA Weightlifting seminars if you would like that at your gym. We can help you out and kind of break down all these details for you and any specific questions you have as a weightlifter

or a coach, we'd love to help you out. We got to have an event at your seminar as we do Stump the Thacker. Let's ask you random ass shit about whale up and see what you really know.

I bet you can answer everything. I don't know. Stump the Fack. Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. Boop. All right. Thanks, Justin. All right.

Thank you, guys. Thanks.